Hi Sonia,
Thanks for coming in today. It was great to meet you and I think you have some really exciting work going on with a lot of potential to become very meaningful and poetic to you. I'm just going to jot down a few ideas that we talked about.
The need to be personal: It sounds like you are searching for a more compelling and personal take on the issue of US involvement in other countries. What was happening with the 2 large paintings on paper of the pregnant lady, and the proposed accompanying 15 fifteens illustrating the actual countries, was that they were turning into illustrations. If you had wanted to talk about those stories, then you could have just written a paper, and making images about it wouldn't be necessary. Hence, the need for your work to be more personal and more about you. We looked at an image you had painted of yourself on a large piece of cardboard. It was a nice use of materials, with a contrast between a detailed, carefully painted portrait on a very casual and flimsy material: cardboard. That use of the material with the image was exciting to me, and I'd like to see you incorporate materials into your concept.
In the end, we decided that you should still do those 15 paintings, but instead of having each one represent a country, the paintings should be self-portraits, or images that represent your life. The paintings are to be exploratory, meaning you don't have to know what each one will be before you paint it. These paintings will work as preliminary works to help you know what to put on the larger cardboard pieces. For example you may want to paint a portrait of the home you grew up in, your father in his government uniform, things you remember from life in Uruguay, your home in the US, your American raised children, etc. In these works you can also explore the metaphors you are interested in creating, such as how you are like the characters from the Wizard of Oz, lost and on a path, searching for identity.
I look forward to seeing what you come up with! Thank you!
Unfinish project to be completed by the next residency
